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Accepted Manuscript: Measurement of the inclusive 3-jet production differential cross section in proton–proton collisions at 7 TeV and determination of the strong coupling constant in the TeV range

Title: Measurement of the inclusive 3-jet production differential cross section in proton–proton collisions at 7 TeV and determination of the strong coupling constant in the TeV range

This article presents a measurement of the inclusive 3-jet production differential cross section at a proton–proton centre-of-mass energy of 7 TeV using data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 5fb–1 collected with the CMS detector. The analysis is based on the three jets with the highest transverse momenta. The cross section is measured as a function of the invariant mass of the three jets in a range of 445–3270 GeV and in two bins of the maximum rapidity of the jets up to a value of 2. A comparison between the measurement and the prediction from perturbative QCD at next-to-leading order is performed. Within uncertainties, data and theory are in agreement. The sensitivity of the observable to the strong coupling constant αS is studied. A fit to all data points with 3-jet masses larger than 664 GeV gives a value of the strong coupling constant of αS(MZ) = 0.1171 ± 0.0013(exp)+0.0073–0.0047(theo).